First Impressions / Hataraku Saibou

“Staphylococcus aureus”


「黄色ブドウ球菌」 (Oushoku Budou Kyuukin)

I can’t say that I was too keen on the idea of bacteria coming back for yet another round. If the series decided to skip some chapters, I would have preferred for it to skip out on similar-ish content, rather than miss out on more unique stuff. But I suppose if we consider that Hataraku Saibou is intended to educate on Biology, as opposed to merely being there for our entertainment, then it’s totally understandable why they would take a more balanced approach to selecting what gets adapted. Nevertheless, it was always going to be an enjoyable episode, so you can ignore my rudimentary qualms and we can jump straight into dissecting what took place.

Bacteria Round 2.0

What do you know, the bacteria are back! And this time they are armed with a new trick up their sleeves. At first, it looked to be a walk in the park for the White Blood Cells as the bacterium were sitting ducks that they were easily tearing through. But by utilising the fibrin that the platelets generate, the bacteria completely neutralised the neutrophils. Quite a strong terrain bonus if you ask me. Furthermore, the bacteria merged together into a mega bacterium of the likes which we’ve never seen before. You know when baddies lose the first round then become the size of a city? Yeah, I got Super Sentai / Power Ranger vibes from that. With the situation looking dire, I’m sure that people were wondering how the immune system would overcome such an ordeal. While a Megazord didn’t show up, a lost opportunity in my opinion for turning this scenario into a Mecha parody, we got something equally as good if not better.

Thumbs Up!

Perhaps those clued into the specifics on Monocytes would have it figured out. But who could have guessed that Macrophages were beneath those Hazmat suits? Their appearance at the start of the episode sure made for a nice case of Chekov’s Gun, when it came to requiring some kind of Deus Ex Machina to save the day, once the neutrophils were down for the count. With unbridled savagery and unrestrained brutality, the macrophages really made the bacteria regret ever setting foot inside of the body! That said, I’d be curious to see if there’s something out there that would give the macrophages real trouble, since we haven’t seen them break a sweat so far in this series.

Insider Information on Valve?!?

The Monocytes personally reminded me of the Pyro class, which I used to main back in the days of ol’ TF2. Too bad Valve have all but abandoned the game. By the way, I actually have insider info, so let’s take a detour here. It may look like Valve have abandoned things and have lost touch with the community. But they are currently working on Team Fortress 3, Half Life 3, Portal 3 and Left For Dead 3 with the intention of spearheading the inevitable transition into mainstream VR gaming. And imagine the collective community response when this finally gets announced! But I’m digressing here. Portals and Half Lives are the kind of schtick to do with physics – totally unrelated to cellular biology. So time to get back on track.

Concluding Thoughts

I just realised that corniness has been a handy tool to keep this series fun and action-packed while still being kid-friendly. Otherwise the amount of gore would surely be PG at the very least. But even as an adult, I’m totally having a blast with this delightful mix of serious and silliness. Hataraku Saibou has done a fantastic job at getting its general appeal nailed. With the bacteria soundly beaten, what next? Looking at the preview, we will be getting one of my favourite chapters from the manga – Heatstroke. Watching it come to life will definitely be a treat! Anyway, that’s about everything I wanted to talk about for now. As always, thanks for reading my post, and see you next week!

Preview

15 Comments

  1. Despite this taking place late in the manga, you’d think that this is one of the earlier chapters to be adapted, because it is basically a crash course on what Macrophages are and their relationship to Monocytes (and even then I hear the chapter AND this ep get the facts totally wrong!). That, along with the overuse of recycled animation and even repeated moments (the platelet even says she got her cheek “again”), the fact that there are no new characters introduced including a return of an old villain, AND the hot springs/nasal cavities being the only new location… makes this probably the worst episode in the show so far. Not that it doesn’t ruin its entertainment, but it does seem like a few pages stretched out into 23 minutes and it feels incredibly slow.

    That said, I am glad Red Blood Cell appears to go through the circulatory system without help now! You can do it!

    starss
    Reply

    1. tl;dr – They are in alpha development for primarily VR but Valve are trying to perfect the process as much as possible + they’re waiting for VR technology to reach a certain point before proceeding. From what I’ve heard they’re having issues with VR vs keyboard + mouse being extremely unbalanced. Apparently VR players can contort their bodies in all sorts of ways to juke shots and land them, it being something that they’re struggling to compensate for. 10/10 the team that’s using VR will utterly stomp the one that is using keyboard + mouse.

      Zaiden
      Reply

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